I once thought that awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize at the onset of his first term suffered from the committee’s gross presumption and the award’s painfully obvious prematurity. Now I see the award’s timing was its chief virtue: When else could the Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded to a man who’d go on to spend his entire time in office degrading the scaffolding of world peace at every opportunity?

Holding onto this once prestigious prize until Obama had actually done something to promote world peace would have been frustrating for a politically correct committee so eager to honor this little man. Imagine Obama’s frustration having to actually do something in the course of his misery-plagued tenure to significantly promote world peace — way to cramp a guy’s signature style.

So, here we are: Our military bereft of confidence in its civilian leadership; a community of Western nations bereft of confidence in American resolve; ISIS swells in membership, support and success; the monomaniacal mullahs of Iran move confidently to secure nukes and achieve regional hegemony.

Our military can do occasional small-ball raids going after this or that thug, but influence the course of nations? Beyond our means.

Could this diminution of American power possibly be what the Nobel Committee presciently conceived of as Obama’s contribution to world peace? Could they also have foreseen the ruin, misery and bloodshed that would accompany that diminution?

Shame on them all around, no matter how one parses answers to those questions.

Lenny Hoy, Greenwood